Report: ATF falls short in gun dealer inspections

10:48 AM,
May 4, 2013

EAST WINDSOR, CT - DECEMBER 21: A customer leaves after seeing a closed sign on the front door of the Riverview Gun Sales shop on December 21, 2012 in East Windsor, Connecticut. According to the Hartford Courant, sources investigating the massacre at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown have said the Bushmaster rifle used by the gunman Adam Lanza was legally purchased at the shop by his mother Nancy Lanza. The Courant also reports that records show the guns used in a previous mass shooting in Connecticut in 2010, where Omar Thornton killed eight people and himself at Hartford Distributers Inc, were also purchased at Riverview Gun Sales. On Thursday agents from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), and local police raided and closed the gun shop. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

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The ATF failed to inspect more than 58 percent of federal firearms licensees in the past five years because of "insufficient investigator resources" and "competing priorities," meaning violations could go undetected for years, a recent Department of Justice Office of Inspector General report found.

And when the ATF decides to revoke a federal firearms license as it did in the case of the owner of a Connecticut gun shop, which sold two guns found at the Newtown, Conn., school massacre scene, the process can last longer than a year or two, the report says. As revocations are held up by ...